"First Person Shooter"

"He's getting his 'ya-ya's' out."
Originally Aired 2/27/00

Just like the previous episode, "X-COPS", I held off on watching it until I could watch it with another person. There was greater significance for "X-COPS", but a good friend of mine and I share a love for action movies, so I had a feeling this would be up our alley since it's full of effects, guns, and lots of cheese. The cheese factor was really high this episode as evidenced by the dialogue, with lines like, "Scully's in the zone!"

If I wasn't aware that this episode was written by William Gibson and Tom Maddux, who also wrote Season 5's "Killswitch", then I'd have argued that this was the work of Chris Carter; he is credited as the episode's director. It feels like a companion piece to his canceled series Harsh Realm, which happened to air concurrently with this season of The X-Files, that is until it's early cancellation. Much of this episode takes place within a highly realistic virtual reality video game, similar to Harsh Realm's setting of military-simulated virtual reality. In Harsh Realm, a human character played by Terry O'Quinn hi-jacked the video game from within, while in "First Person Shooter" the villain is actually a character that has taken control of the game. Even the level in the video game in "First Person Shooter" resembles a setpiece from the series Harsh Realm.

As I stated before, this episode was another 'computer-gone-bad' episode from William Gibson and Tom Maddux, and part-way through I was actually wishing that I'd rather be watching their earlier episode, "Killswitch." I didn't like it because it felt very dated, mostly because of the 'Invisi-Goth' character, who was a very bad stereotype of what a hacker/loner/computer chick would be. This time around, it's very dated because of it's cornball dialogue. It might not be as bad if the writers didn't feel the need to give everyone lines that felt ripped off from the Ninja Turtles and Spicolli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High; "radical!" The saving grace is actually David Duchovny, with his sunglasses that he wore throughout his time within the video game. I don't know why it made me laugh but it did. An appearance from the Lone Gunmen is always appreciated, especially since this season has been very light on appearances from the trio. In fact, this might even be their first appearance so far this year.

I could very well be wrong about this episode, though. If it was made as a parody of action movies and video games, maybe it's ahead of it's time since this is far before Call of Duty and other console-based shooters became hugely popular, much like Vince Gilligan's "X-COPS" seemed ahead of the 'found footage' trend. All I can recall from this era were arcade games you had to feed quarters into at the mall, Doom for computers, and games like Duke Nukem on Playstation. This episode even has the busty babe which is an action movie staple, also a slow-motion walking scene with the heroes (maybe it needed doves like in a John Woo movie), and a scene spoofing Basic Instinct, so it possibly is more farce than anything to be taken seriously. I still feel like the 'computer-gone-bad' is a well they've hit too often, following "Ghost In The Machine" and "Killswitch."

The odd thing about Season 7 is that it seems to have more high points with it's mythology arc than it's standalones, and I'm not sure why that is, since the mythology is actually not as compelling as it was a year ago. I guess they can only do so much with alien rebels and bounty hunters, because just like I stated during the fourth season, I like the way Carter turned inward for his stories and centering on the characters themselves than the fantastic elements. The two-part installment of "Sein Und Zeit" and "Closure" would be an early favorite for me if I were to rank the season at this point, although a few "new" episodes still remain. Those would be "Chimera", "allthings", "Hollywood A.D.", and "Fight Club", though I caught about ten minutes from both "Chimera" and "Hollywood A.D." years ago on the SyFy Channel when I was still a new fan. Those 4 remaining are actually the final four I have left of the entire series as I've previously watched all of 8 and 9.